All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocent Americans in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question to which any rational, thinking human being already knows the answer: Were Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik Muslim jihadists committing acts of holy war on American soil?

But motives do not matter to dead individuals, in California, Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut, and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to protect individual freedom but who place a higher premium on the money and political power gained by using each tragic incident as an excuse to further disarm the victims of the day, stripping away options by which they could have defended themselves before their bodies have even been laid to…